Ethics, Activism, and the Rise of Interdisciplinary Animal Studies: An Interview with Cary Wolfe

Dana Medero, Alison Calder

Abstract

In this interview, Professor Cary Wolfe—author of the recently published Animal Rites:
American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (2003) and editor of
Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (2003)—discusses and clarifies his approaches to the
subjects of animal rights, ethics, and post-humanist theory. To better address the relationship
between human and non-human animals,Wolfe insists upon a ceaseless examination of
culturally encoded and oppressively maintained divisions across different species.
Throughout the interview,Wolfe contends that "speciesism" should invite the same critical
attention in the academy that has been recruited against sexism and racism.